... the reminiscences have a crackling vitality.

The tension between the critic’s high expectations and the book’s low visibility tells you a good deal. On one, fairly banal, level, it points to a predictable disparity between the author’s popularity at home and her profile abroad.

Erpenbeck’s refreshing frankness and incisive thinking permeate this collection.

... very little about this book resembles a traditional memoir. We walk briefly among shadows and memories of her childhood in East Berlin, but there is nothing in the way of immersive personal detail save her granular memories of losing her mother and managing the inventory of her belongings and apartment after her death.

... this short volume did not entirely live up to my desire for it. It does not continue the journey of Go, Went, Gone, which I realise now was complete in itself, but it yields some insights, both into that novel and into her earlier fictional works, and into some of the influences and experiences that have forged Erpenbeck’s vision.

Familiarity with Erpenbeck's fiction is not necessary to appreciate this collection—though there are certainly insights into her work that are enriched by her discussion of some of it here. Many of the pieces cover similar terrain, the areas of particular interest to her that she also addresses in her fiction, from language itself to more social-political issues such as that of migration, and the thoughtfulness to her fiction comes across similarly in these well-turned pieces. There's a refreshing variety to her approaches, too; some of these are small, even incidental pieces—a few hundred words on a particular theme or subject—but pretty much all of them are at least in some way distinctive, as Erpenbeck puts a great deal of effort into finding just the right way to present and frame the piece in question. Not a Novel is a very good little collection, and while perhaps some opportunity has been missed in not translating the entire German original, the volume one really must look forward to is the—'memoir in full'—rather than put together from pieces, as here—that one hopes Erpenbeck will eventually write. As this collection already makes clear, hers is a life (and writing-life) well worth examining—and she is very good at putting things—her own life and experiences included—under the lens..

A memoir from one of Europe’s most original and accomplished writers.